The National Catholic Register reports that the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC) celebrated its 50th anniversary on April 30, 2026, at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C., with several hundred supporters and New York Times columnist Ross Douthat as keynote speaker. The article describes the EPPC as a “uniquely ecumenical think tank” that engages public policy “within the context of America’s historic Judeo-Christian moral framework.” Douthat praised the institution for “maintaining a place for a serious religious conservativism in American political discourse,” contrasting it favorably with Western Europe’s “suffocating secular-liberal consensus.” EPPC President Ryan Anderson, citing John Adams, called the think tank part of America’s “secret sauce,” affirming the Declaration of Independence’s proposition that “all men are created equal” and “endowed by our Creator with inalienable rights.” Anderson emphasized that the EPPC’s guiding lights are “the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures, the natural law tradition, Western Civilization in general, and the American constitutional order in particular,” and that it operates in an “intentionally ecumenical way” as a community of Jewish, Protestant, and Catholic scholars. The article highlights the prominent role of Catholic scholars at the EPPC, listing numerous individuals in leadership positions and programs including bioethics, Catholic studies, the Catholic Women’s Forum, the Person and Identity Project, and the Life and Family Initiative. What the article entirely obscures is that this “ecumenical” framework, far from being a bulwark against secularism, is itself a manifestation of the very religious indifferentism and naturalism that the Church has consistently condemned, reducing the supernatural mission of the Catholic Church to a mere participant in a “Judeo-Christian” political project that leaves the Kingship of Christ and the obligation of the State to profess the true Faith entirely unaddressed.
The “Judeo-Christian” Framework: A Naturalist Abstraction Against the Kingship of Christ
The most immediately striking feature of this article, and of the EPPC’s self-presentation, is the phrase “Judeo-Christian moral framework” invoked as the foundation for public policy engagement. This phrase, repeated approvingly throughout the article, is not Catholic theology. It is a political abstraction born of religious indifferentism — the heresy condemned by Pope Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors when he rejected the proposition that “it is no longer expedient that the Catholic religion should be held as the only religion of the State, to the exclusion of all other forms of worship” (Proposition 77), and further condemned those who claim that “the civil liberty of every form of worship… conduce more easily to… propagate the pest of indifferentism” (Proposition 79).
The Catholic Church has never taught that the United States, or any nation, should be governed by a “Judeo-Christian framework.” She has taught, with absolute clarity, that Jesus Christ is King of all nations, and that rulers and states have the duty to publicly recognize and obey Him. Pope Pius XI, in the encyclical Quas Primas (1925), established the Feast of Christ the King precisely to address the “secularism of our times, so-called laicism, its errors and wicked endeavors.” He declared: “The State must leave the same freedom to the members of Orders and Congregations… who contribute most to the expansion and establishment of Christ’s Kingdom” and “the annual celebration of this solemnity will also remind states that not only private individuals, but also rulers and governments have the duty to publicly honor Christ and obey Him: for it will remind them of the final judgment, in which Christ, whom not only was cast out of the state, but was also forgotten and ignored through contempt, will very severely avenge these insults, because His royal dignity demands that all relations in the state be ordered on the basis of God’s commandments and Christian principles, both in the issuing of laws and in the administration of justice, as well as in the education and formation of youth in sound doctrine and purity of morals.”
The EPPC’s “Judeo-Christian framework” is, in practice, a reduction of Catholic social teaching to a lowest-common-denominator naturalism that can be shared with Jews who reject Christ, Protestants who deny the Real Presence, and secular liberals who accept “natural law” only insofar as it does not impose specifically Catholic dogma. This is not the Catholic Faith. This is the liberalism condemned by Pope Pius IX when he anathematized those who claim that “the Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, reconcile himself, and come to terms with progress, liberalism and modern civilization” (Proposition 80 of the Syllabus of Errors).
Ecumenism as a Structural Principle: The “Intentionally Ecumenical” Apostasy
Ryan Anderson explicitly stated that the EPPC conducts its work in an “intentionally ecumenical way” as a community of Jewish, Protestant, and Catholic scholars. This is not a neutral descriptor. It is a confession of principle that places the EPPC squarely within the post-conciliar ecumenical revolution that has devastated the Church since Vatican II.
The Catholic Church has always taught that she is the one true Church of Christ, outside of which there is no salvation, and that it is not lawful for Catholics to participate in non-Catholic religious activities in a manner that would imply a parity of worship or doctrine. Pope Pius XI, in Mortalium Animos (1928), condemned the ecumenical movement in unambiguous terms: “The union of Christians can only be promoted by promoting the return to the one true Church of Christ of those who are separated from it, for in the past they have unhappily left it.” He further warned that “it is clear that the Apostolic See cannot on any terms take part in their assemblies, nor is it anyway lawful for Catholics either to support or to work for such enterprises; for if they do so they will be giving countenance to a false religion, quite alien to the one Church of Christ.”
The EPPC’s “intentional ecumenism” is not merely a pragmatic alliance on policy questions. It is a theological statement: that Jews, Protestants, and Catholics share a common “moral framework” that is sufficient for ordering public life, and that the specific claims of the Catholic Church — the Papacy, the sacraments, the necessity of the Catholic Faith for salvation — are either irrelevant to the public square or, worse, an obstacle to be set aside in the name of “common ground.” This is precisely the indifferentism that Pope Gregory XVI condemned in Mirari Vos (1832): the error that “it is possible to obtain the eternal salvation of the soul by the profession of any religion whatever.”
The article’s celebration of this ecumenical structure, without a single critical note, reveals the extent to which the conciliar sect has normalized what was once recognized as a grave departure from Catholic truth. The EPPC does not merely tolerate ecumenism; it celebrates it as a defining feature. This is not fidelity to the Catholic Faith. It is fidelity to the spirit of Vatican II’s Unitatis Redintegratio and Nostra Aetate — documents that opened the floodgates to the dilution of Catholic identity and the effective apostasy of the post-conciliar institution.
The Cult of the American Constitutional Order: A Substitute Religion
Anderson’s invocation of John Adams — “our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other” — and his appeal to the Declaration of Independence’s proposition that “all men are created equal” and “endowed by our Creator with inalienable rights,” reveals a deeper theological problem. The EPPC treats the American constitutional order as a “guiding light” alongside, and apparently on par with, “the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures” and “the natural law tradition.”
This is a form of Americanism — the heresy condemned by Pope Leo XIII in his letter Testem Benevolentiae (1899) to Cardinal James Gibbons. Leo XIII warned against the error of those who would “embrace and follow those views which are peculiar to America” and who would “desire that the Church should adapt herself to our times and conform to what is called the genius of the American people.” The Holy Father distinguished between the legitimate liberty of the Church in America and the false liberalism that would subordinate Catholic doctrine to American political culture.
The EPPC’s framework effectively treats the United States Constitution and the Declaration of Independence as a quasi-scriptural authority, a source of moral and political truth that stands alongside divine revelation and natural law. This is not Catholic teaching. The Church has always held that the civil order must be subordinated to the spiritual order, and that the state has a positive duty to profess and protect the Catholic Faith. Pope Pius XI declared in Quas Primas: “Christ possesses unlimited right over all that is created, so that all is subject to His will.” The American constitutional order, with its First Amendment prohibition on the establishment of religion, is in fact a secularist document that explicitly refuses to acknowledge the Kingship of Christ — the very error that Pius XI identified as the root of modern society’s ills.
By celebrating the American constitutional order as a “guiding light,” the EPPC effectively endorses the separation of Church and State — the very proposition that Pope Pius IX condemned as an error in the Syllabus of Errors (Proposition 55: “The Church ought to be separated from the State, and the State from the Church”). This is not a minor theological quibble. It is a fundamental betrayal of the Catholic understanding of the relationship between the two powers.
The Silence on the Social Reign of Christ: The Gravest Omission
Perhaps the most damning feature of this article, and of the EPPC’s entire self-presentation, is what it does not say. There is not a single mention of the Social Kingship of Christ, the obligation of the state to profess the Catholic Faith, the necessity of the Church’s independence from secular authority, or the reality of the modern apostasy within the Church itself.
Pope Pius XI, in Quas Primas, was explicit: “The feast of Christ the King… will remind states that not only private individuals, but also rulers and governments have the duty to publicly honor Christ and obey Him.” He further declared that “the Church, established by Christ as a perfect society, demands for itself by a right belonging to it, which it cannot renounce, full freedom and independence from secular authority.” The EPPC’s entire program — engaging in public policy “within the context of America’s historic Judeo-Christian moral framework” — operates entirely within the assumptions of the secular liberal order, seeking to influence policy within that order rather than challenging the order’s fundamental refusal to acknowledge Christ’s Kingship.
This is the hallmark of the post-conciliar apostasy: the reduction of the Church’s mission to naturalistic humanism. The EPPC’s programs — bioethics, technology and human flourishing, Catholic studies, the Catholic Women’s Forum, the Person and Identity Project, the Life and Family Initiative — are all framed in terms that are intelligible and acceptable to the secular world. They do not challenge the fundamental premises of the modern secular state. They do not call for the conversion of the United States to the Catholic Faith. They do not demand that the state recognize the Church as the one true religion. They operate entirely within the framework of religious liberty — the very concept condemned by Pope Pius IX and Pope Leo XIII.
The article’s celebration of the EPPC’s “resilience” in “maintaining a place for a serious religious conservativism in American political discourse” is, from the perspective of integral Catholic faith, a celebration of capitulation. The EPPC has not maintained a place for the Catholic Faith in American political discourse. It has maintained a place for a watered-down, ecumenical, naturalistic conservatism that is acceptable to Jews, Protestants, and secular liberals alike — precisely because it has abandoned the specifically Catholic demands of the Social Kingship of Christ.
The “Catholic Scholars” of the EPPC: Apostles of the Conciliar Revolution
The article lists numerous Catholic scholars in leadership roles at the EPPC: Ryan Anderson, George Weigel, Ed Whelan, Mary Hasson, Stephen White, O. Carter Snead, Noelle Mering, Aaron Kheriaty, Theresa Farnan, Mary FioRito, Francis Maier, Jennifer Bryson, among others. These individuals are all products of, and participants in, the post-conciliar institution. Their work, however well-intentioned in natural terms, operates entirely within the framework of the conciliar sect’s accommodation to the modern world.
George Weigel, in particular, is a prominent figure in the post-conciliar establishment, known for his hagiographic writings on “Saint” John Paul II — the antipope who did more than any other individual to advance the ecumenical, interreligious, and modernist agenda of Vatican II. Weigel’s work is a testament to the hermeneutic of continuity — the modernist attempt to reconcile the pre-conciliar and post-conciliar Church, to pretend that Vatican II was not a rupture but a development. This hermeneutic was condemned in advance by Pope St. Pius X in Pascendi Dominici Gregis (1907), where he identified the Modernist error of “the evolution of dogmas” — the idea that “dogmas, sacraments, and hierarchy, both in concept and in reality, are merely modes of explanation and stages in the evolution of Christian consciousness” (Proposition 54 of Lamentabili Sane Exitus).
The EPPC’s Catholic scholars are not defenders of the Catholic Faith. They are defenders of the conciliar sect’s version of Catholicism — a version that has been stripped of its supernatural claims, its exclusive soteriology, and its demand for the Social Kingship of Christ. They are, in the language of Pope St. Pius X, “enemies within” — not because they are consciously malicious, but because they have absorbed the spirit of the age and mistaken it for the spirit of the Gospel.
Ross Douthat and the Illusion of “Serious Religious Conservatism”
Ross Douthat, the keynote speaker at the EPPC’s gala, is described in the article as having credited the EPPC for “maintaining a place for a serious religious conservativism in American political discourse.” Douthat, a Catholic columnist for the New York Times, represents the type of Catholic intellectual who has made his peace with the secular liberal order and seeks to carve out a space for “religious” arguments within it.
Douthat’s contrast between the EPPC’s influence and Western Europe’s “suffocating secular-liberal, social and cultural liberal consensus” is revealing. By his own admission, the standard of success is not the conversion of nations to the Catholic Faith, not the establishment of the Social Kingship of Christ, but merely the ability to make “religious arguments” that “find purchase” in the public square. This is a naturalistic criterion of success — measured not by fidelity to divine revelation but by influence within a secular framework.
Pope Pius XI, in Quas Primas, described the true measure of success: “If men were ever to recognize Christ’s royal authority over themselves, both privately and publicly, then unheard-of blessings would flow upon the whole society, such as due freedom, order, and tranquility, and concord and peace.” The EPPC’s measure of success is far more modest: the ability to publish op-eds, influence policy debates, and maintain a seat at the table of American political discourse. This is not the Catholic Faith. This is political Catholicism — a Catholicism that has been reduced to a political interest group, competing for influence in a secular arena that it has no intention of fundamentally challenging.
The “Secret Sauce” of America: A Recipe for Apostasy
Ryan Anderson’s characterization of the EPPC as part of America’s “secret sauce” is, perhaps inadvertently, a perfect description of the problem. The “secret sauce” of America is not the Catholic Faith. It is religious liberty, pluralism, and the separation of Church and State — the very principles that the Catholic Church has consistently condemned.
The EPPC’s celebration of the American constitutional order, its “intentional ecumenism,” its “Judeo-Christian framework,” and its engagement with public policy within the assumptions of the secular liberal order — all of this is part of the “secret sauce” that has made America a Protestant country with a secular government, not a Catholic country with a government that acknowledges the Kingship of Christ. The EPPC is not working to change this. It is working to make the best of it — to find a place for “religious conservativism” within a system that is fundamentally hostile to the Catholic Faith.
This is the tragedy of the post-conciliar Catholic intellectual: he has been so thoroughly formed by the conciliar revolution that he cannot imagine a Catholicism that is not accommodated to the modern world. He cannot imagine a Church that demands the conversion of nations, the submission of the state to Christ the King, and the exclusive recognition of the Catholic Faith as the one true religion. He can only imagine a Church that “engages” with the world on the world’s terms — and calls this “faithfulness.”
Conclusion: The EPPC and the Abomination of Desolation
The Ethics and Public Policy Center, as presented in this article, is not a Catholic institution. It is an ecumenical institution that employs Catholic scholars and uses Catholic language to advance a program that is fundamentally at odds with the Catholic Faith. Its “Judeo-Christian framework” is a naturalist abstraction that denies the exclusive claims of the Catholic Church. Its “intentional ecumenism” is a structural expression of the religious indifferentism condemned by every pope from Gregory XVI to Pius XII. Its celebration of the American constitutional order is an endorsement of the separation of Church and State condemned by Pius IX. Its silence on the Social Kingship of Christ is a betrayal of the most fundamental demand of the Catholic social magisterium.
The EPPC is, in short, a product of the conciliar revolution — the great apostasy that has transformed the Catholic Church from the one true Church of Christ into a “paramasonic structure” that serves the interests of the modern world. Its 50th anniversary is not a cause for celebration. It is a cause for mourning — and for prayer for the conversion of those who have been led astray by the false promises of ecumenism, religious liberty, and the “secret sauce” of American pluralism.
As Pope Pius XI declared in Quas Primas: “The more the sweetest Name of our Redeemer is omitted with unworthy silence in international gatherings and parliaments, the more loudly it must be confessed and the more urgently the rights of Christ the Lord’s royal dignity and authority must be recognized.” The EPPC’s “Judeo-Christian framework” is precisely such an “unworthy silence” — a framework in which the Name of Christ is replaced by the abstraction of “Judeo-Christian values,” and in which the rights of Christ the King are subordinated to the rights of the American constitutional order. This is not Catholicism. This is apostasy.
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Source:
Ethics and Public Policy Center at 50: A Part of America’s ‘Secret Sauce’ (ncregister.com)
Date: 04.05.2026